Press Release, 4.03.2022

Photo: Kirill Rumyantsev during his single picket

The Press Service of the Yabloko party received was a voice recording of a conversation between Kirill Rumyantsev, an activist of the party and a fourth year student of the Saratov State Law Academy, and Alexander Zemlyansky, the Director of the Academy’s Institute of Justice.

The reason for the conversation was participation of Rumyantsev in a single picket (single pickets do not require any permissions from the authorities) with a poster “Russians are against the war! Russians are against Putin! Peace to Ukraine!” The police detained the activist during a picket on 25 February and released him from a few hours later with a warning about the “inadmissibility of antisocial behavior”. The police could not explain the reasons for detaining the picketer, since Kirill Rumyantsev did not violate the laws of the Russian Federation.

A few days later, on 28 February, Rumyantsev was summoned to Alexander Zemlyansky, Director of the Institute of Justice, for a conversation.

The Director of the Institute, which annually prepares several hundred bachelors – future judges, explained to his student that a student of a law school cannot oppose the current government. Zemlyansky called participation of a young man in a single picket against the war with Ukraine a betrayal, and the war – an operation that “started there for a reason”.

Due to the fact that some statements of the representative of the academy can be regarded as a threat of expulsion of the student, Yabloko demands from the heads of the Saratov State Law Academy to stop pressure on Yabloko party member Kirill Rumyantsev, and also not to create obstacles for him in the last few months of his studies at the university.

We also remind Alexander Zemlyansky, Director of the Institute of Justice of the Saratov State Law Academy, that there is no course “Political Education” in the approved training programme for his students.